When Home is... One You Once Lived In

I know we’ve talked about revisiting childhood homes and fantasy homes but we haven’t talked about revisiting a home you once lived in as an adult. This thought struck me yesterday as we accidentally revisited one such home and I was surprised by the emotions it conjured. Well, actually I was surprised by the lack of any emotions.

We took the kids to the Museum – a good rainy day solution for the end of a long weekend – and parked in a nearby side street. We parked about three doors up from a flat Stuart and I once rented before we were married but neither of us mentioned this as we got everyone out of the car. It was raining and the museum was in the opposite direction.

On the way back to the car we walked down the hill, passed this old flat, to get coffee.

‘Look kids’, I said pointing across the road, ‘see that tiny balcony near the top of that tree?’

‘Um yeah’, said Lily squinting slightly.

‘What tree?’ asked Ned looking in the opposite direction.

‘Banana bread’, said Louis pointing down the hill towards the cafe strip.

‘Well, mummy and daddy once lived there.’ I said, not quite believing it.

‘What’s with those purple curtains?’ asked Stuart as he turned to walk away.

Everyone walked on quietly. I wondered why I didn’t feel happy or nostalgic seeing that little Juliet balcony again. We only lived there for six months but a lot happened during that time: Stuart proposed, I found my first job in book publishing, we’d just returned from a big overseas trip and the future had really changed direction. It was a good time; fun to live in the middle of the city and work there too. Yet none of those memories came flooding back as we stood outside the building.

‘What number house was it?’ asked Lily as we got to the cafe.

‘Ummm. I have no idea,’ I said and looked at Stuart. He shrugged his shoulders.

As we walked back to the car, we stopped outside the building so Lily could see the number.

‘There you go, you lived at number 17,’ she smiled.

‘That must mean we were unit 6,’ said Stuart as he looked at the side door we used to enter through. Still, those numbers meant absolutely nothing to me.

‘Well, there you go,’ I said, ‘you guys weren’t even born when we lived here. Isn’t that strange?’

‘I’m glad I never lived here,’ replied Ned, ‘this hill is too steep for me. I can’t make it up to the car.’ He started whining.

Lily and Louis were already up at the car, ready for home. Their home, not this strange little balcony in this inner city street.

Perhaps while our homes shape us they also don’t become us. While they can be an external expression of who we were at a particular stage of our lives, we don’t need to recognise them in the same way we recognise old friends or distant relatives. We don’t need those buildings to remind us of the person we were then... and that, for some reason, surprises me.

When Home is... Full Bookshelves

This happens every year. The bookshelves are filled and no more books can be stacked sideways on top of others. It’s time to be ruthless and work out which are worthy to stay and which are on the way to Vinnies or the School Fete.

Usually I do this job alone and it doesn’t take too long to pick a pile of paperback fiction that I can live without but this year something different happened... Stuart. While innocently out having coffee, unbeknownst to me, he was busy making piles – ‘suggested’ piles – of books to give away. The suggested pile was chosen with common sense in mind but no emotion.

It was then that I realised books not only give a room its soul but they also act as markers of our history, they help shape the story of the people we become. They are yet another expression of making our homes truly ours.

Ok – I know I will never need to use my pregnancy books again or Robin Barker’s bible Baby Love but I still want to see the bent back spines of those books on the shelves, remembering how thumbed through they were. I like seeing the folded back pages in Baby Love reminding me that, yes, at three weeks old babies properly wake up and cry for substantial periods of time and that’s normal. It was hell at the time but now I fondly remember turning down the corner of that page at 2am one morning with three-week-old Lily screaming in one arm while I held the book in the other.

And as for fiction; I agree that my shelves filled with Virginia Andrews complete collection – and dare I mention Penny Vincenzi – may cause visitors to wonder how I became a book editor or why any magazine would ask me to write book reviews, but these books are such old friends. At least my Sweet Valley High collection is hidden under the bed...

I haven’t read Flowers in the Attic since I was 14 but it was within these pages I discovered the power of reading and the pleasure of escaping into another world. I like remembering that excitement and I don’t mind that it’s on display for all to see. They may take up nearly a whole shelf but they are staying.

So while Stuart’s ‘suggested’ pile went straight back on the shelves I still managed to get us back to full capacity rather than over capacity.

Interestingly, my ‘suggested’ pile for him also went back on the shelves. Funny how common sense goes when it’s about pulling apart your own story. I don’t think he’ll be reading Tuning a Racing Boat, Three Sheets to the Wind, They Ran with the Ball or The World’s Best Rugby Book Ever again but there they sit.

When Home is... a Gatehouse, a Palace... no actually a Water Tower

How is it already April, the end of first term, the start of Autumn and the first quarter of the year already gone? And how is it that we will be heading off to the other side of the world before the year is out without having had any thoughts of booking flights or accommodation?

For all these reasons, the last couple of weeks have seen me think very little of ‘home’ here in Sydney and panic about a temporary home in the UK in many months time.

Oh yes; with me it’s always about the accommodation. And knowing me as well as a certain English friend does, it’s not too surprising that she sent me the link to The Landmark Trust website...

We’re in London – rain hail or shine – for a special friend’s wedding. Not the royal wedding, obviously (although her father did tell me recently that my friend is a descendent of King Edward I) and while accommodation is sorted for that weekend, we aren’t flying all that way for two days. So where to stay for a couple of weeks either side?

Well, thanks to the Landmark Trust, I can see a few options.



Wolveton Gatehouse caught my eye first: built during the reign of King Henry VIII. Thomas Hardy came to tea here in 1900 and the towers were thought to have been built during the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century! The Jacobean fireplaces still work; actually they still may be the greatest source of heat with the website suggesting to light the fires and wear an extra layer as the ‘Dorset nobility would have done hundreds of years ago’.

But wait! Where else in the world can you say you stayed in a water tower? After future King Edward VII fell ill with Typhoid in 1871 and his son with the same illness three years later at Sandringham, an investigation into the water supply was ordered. It seemed the castle was built upon numerous cesspools and new waterworks needed to be designed. Part of this design needed to include a service reservoir: this is the 32,000-gallon cast-iron tank that tops the Appleton Water Tower.



The engineer responsible for the design realised the tower would command superb views and the second floor room was made for the royal family and their guests ‘when shooting parties or picnickers required a base during the day’.

Today not only this room, but the whole tower is available for a family of four – and I think Louis could squeeze into a bed with either Lily or Ned too.

But if we really want to feel what it was like to be royalty, why not stay in a palace? Why not, indeed, when Hampton Court Palace offers a two bedroom apartment for rent?

Well to be truthful, it wasn’t ever an apartment that King Henry VIII visited. It was actually built for the Officers of the Pastry and lies in the service wing of the Tudor palace.



It was enlarged, though, by Henry VIII who enjoyed entertaining lavishly and even had extra kitchens built, one solely for the baking of pies.

Imagine, a kitchen just for pies... I think I’m leaning towards a few nights here.

Suddenly I don’t mind the year running away from me.

All pictures © The Landmark Trust website

When Home is... your Grandmother’s Kitchen. An interview with authors Laura Clarke & Claire Wallace

With Mother’s Day just around the corner many of us will be planning to spend time with our families; sharing a meal with our mothers at some point that weekend. But really, how often do we talk to our mothers – and if we’re lucky enough our grandmothers – about their lives and our families stories?

There may well be a favourite family dessert we have been enjoying all our lives but how many of us know the origins of that recipe? Why our mothers or grandmothers used to cook it, who gave the recipe to them and why it has become such a family favourite? We may never think of how these stories began. It’s just a fact that this is our family’s cheesecake recipe; or our family always glazes a ham at Christmas time.

Usually by the time we reach an age when we want to know more; when we’d appreciate the wisdom and seek the comfort of the older generation, our grandmothers aren’t here anymore to give it. It was this realisation that gave Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace the inspiration to record grandmothers stories from around the world. The result is the just published, beautiful recipe book My Grandmother’s Kitchen

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Both women had recently met and both were at turning points in their lives when the conversation about this joint project began: ‘My grandparents brought me up’, says Laura who lived with them in England from the age of 11. ‘When my grandmother died she left me three things: her engagement ring which I wear every day, her kitchen table which we used on the cover of our book, and her recipe book filled with her handwritten sheets of recipes.’

'A couple of years ago, after my grandfather died, I missed them both horribly. I realised I was working in a job I wasn’t passionate about and thought what am I doing? They didn’t raise me to be unhappy so I quit my job and thought about collating my grandmother’s recipes during my time off work.’



‘It was around this time that we met,’ continues Claire, ‘My grandmother had died many years before Laura’s, when I was only 19. Laura and I were talking about our grandmothers and their cooking and I realised I didn’t have any of her recipes written down at all.’

The conversation moved on from their cooking to a desire for both women to talk to their grandmothers again; to ask their advice about all aspects of their lives. ‘It felt like we realised too late how much they had to teach us,’ says Claire.

‘They had lived such amazing lives already and we have so much to learn from them. I remember my grandmother saying just before she died that she still felt 19 and that it was only when she looked in the mirror she realised differently.’

The concept from the beginning was always to include other grandmothers in their book. ‘It was never to be just about our own grandmothers,’ says Laura, ‘We were both passionate about the importance of grandmothers in the home and how great an influence they can be.’



‘So much importance is placed on youth in today’s world and I remember my grandmother saying to me in her 80s that sometimes she felt invisible. We were inspired to find everyday grandmothers for the book who were inspirational because of the lives they have led bringing up their families.’

This book was always going to be much more than just a collection of recipes from around the world. ‘We wanted to fill the book with the kind of information we knew we’d want from our grandmothers if we’d had more time with them,’ begins Laura, ‘we wanted to share these women’s life stories, we wanted them to pass on their wisdom.’



Both women interviewed the 17 grandmothers and their families for up to four or five hours each. They spent numerous hours cooking with them, spending time with their children and grandchildren, calling them constantly to ask more questions and in all cases Claire and Laura cannot emphasise enough how welcomed they were into each household.

It was a hugely emotional journey for them. ‘These women were so positive,’ says Claire, ‘despite some of the stories they shared. It was a reminder of all the things you don’t ever know are behind a face. You don’t know what anyone has been through and you certainly can’t judge their life journey by looking at someone’s face.’



The most emotional part of this journey for Claire and Laura was the death of one of their grandmothers, Cherie Keetley. Cherie died nearly a year ago and while she didn’t live to see the book’s publication, she loved being a part of its creation.

‘Cooking, like love, should be undertaken with wild abandon’, was a piece of wisdom Cherie shared and after her death her family were so grateful as they realised that without this book they would never have written Cherie’s story down. ‘Her recipes were completely embedded in her head’, laughs Laura.

‘I have notes and notes from cooking with Cherie,’ continues Claire, ‘as she had no idea about measurements cooking purely from instinct. Of course, we needed measurements to write the recipes so there was much laughter and trial and error!’

‘This project was so fulfilling,’ continues Laura, ‘we had no idea of the journey this would take us on and we realised again through Cherie’s death how important it is to capture your own families stories.’

The end result is a beautiful tribute to grandmothers everywhere with a chapter at the end to capture your own family’s story.

‘We wanted every page to be unique,’ says Claire, ‘we wanted it to look like a real grandmother’s recipe book with fingerprints, remarks and drawings by kids, splotches of jam.’

And intertwined within it all: those longed for comforting and inspirational words gained from years of perspective, endurance and experience.

No matter what your age who doesn’t need to be reminded that ‘things seem worse in the moment’ or ‘do not always think about your problems: you will see one day they are not so important’ and, finally, ‘Friends are like elevators. They either take you up or take you down. Hold on to good friends and let go of the rest.’

Recipes not only for food but for lives lived well.

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As the seasons in Sydney begin to turn and the weather is cooling down, Laura and Claire thought it would be fitting to share with us a wintry recipe from their book. And a drizzly, cool day like today is the perfect time to try it a warming pumpkin soup...

Rosa Munoz's Pumpkin Soup Serves 6

A friend gave me this recipe many years ago and I have been making it for my family ever since. Over the years I have adapted it and added the nutmeg and coriander. It is a delicious, warming recipe in the winter months.

Ingredients
1 whole Queensland or other pumpkin (it should be approx. 2.5 kg when peeled, deseeded and cubed)
3 medium potatoes
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon oregano chilli flakes to taste
1 teaspoon cumin
1 pinch nutmeg
½ bunch fresh coriander
1 litre cold water or vegetable stock
salt and pepper to season
chives and sour cream to garnish

Start by peeling and deseeding the pumpkin. Cut the flesh into cubes. Then peel and cube the potatoes, thinly slice the onions and roughly chop the garlic. In a medium pot, heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil over a high heat. Add the onion, garlic and coriander and cook until the onion is lightly browned. Add the spices and stir well for about 1 minute. Add 1 litre of cold water or vegetable stock and then the potatoes. Bring to the boil. Turn heat to low, cover pot, and simmer until potatoes are almost cooked. Add the pumpkin and season to taste. Cover and simmer until the pumpkin is cooked. Remove from heat. Remove half the liquid from the pot and put aside in a bowl. With a hand blender, purée the pumpkin mixture and add the reserved liquid until it becomes a soup (thickness to your own preference). Pour into bowls and garnish with chopped chives and a dollop of sour cream.

For more information about Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace, or to buy a copy of the book visit http://www.mygrandmotherskitchen.net/

Their Facebook page also reports on the latest book news and gives you an opportunity to ask questions or contact Laura and Claire direct. Visit www.facebook.com/mygrandmotherskitchen

All photos © Laura Clarke and Claire Wallace

When Home is... the Dining Room

Recently I went to an open house with a friend; a grand old house out of both our price ranges. It was grand for many reasons – hugely proportioned rooms, wrap around veranda, a butler’s pantry – but it was perhaps the dining room with its table for 12that made the house feel most grown-up. People don’t really dine in ‘dining rooms’ anymore, do they? Formal rooms are rarely a selling point these days and while, for me, the most exciting part of our recent renovation was creating a ‘dining nook’ I never envisaged us dining in a separate room to the kitchen.

I didn’t really think much about these thoughts... until I read House Thinking by Winifred Gallagher today. This book is all about the psychology of home; how home not only ‘reflects but also affects who you are.’

So, I was interested to realise how conflicted I truly am. My dining nook says more about me as a person than I ever realised.

‘Today when we ask ourselves, “What kind of people are we, and what kind of home do we want?” our different answers are often reflected in our dining space. If we think of ourselves and homes along the lines of “practical, friendly and casual”, we may decide that it’s silly to waste space on a dining room when most meals are eaten informally in kitchens. If we see ourselves as the kind of people who do things the right way, we may prefer to eat in a handsome formal dining room gleaming with silver...’

Ok, I get that. I would like to be considered as ‘practical, friendly and casual’ AND my new nook reflects this too. BUT, then Gallagher writes:

‘The idea that we may be judged by our dining room or even our wineglasses, or that we care about such judgments, is discomfiting. Yet at mealtime, most of us take some trouble – setting the table, pouring wine, making conversation, lighting candles – to remind ourselves and others that if we’re not to the manor born, we weren’t born in a barn either.’

Hmmm. On Saturday night we had friends over on the spur of the moment. We cooked pasta to watch in front of the rugby; a practical, friendly and casual meal to reflect our practical, friendly and casual selves.

Except we didn’t sit on the lounge to eat or gather around the island bench in a practical, friendly and casual manner; we sat in our dining nook using the ‘good’ cutlery and the ‘good’ plates, drinking red wine out of – albeit Ikea – wineglasses and looking over and around the vase of flowers in the middle of the table to see the game on the television.

Oh, and the children also came downstairs a couple of times to complain that we were talking and laughing too loudly.

Confusion abounds and perhaps it’s time to stop reading books about house psychology.

When Home is... a Toddler without Day Sleeps

It’s been a week between posts. Sadly the quietness hasn’t been due to an inundation of freelance work, a book offer or a busy social life. Instead it’s due to very little time alone and a very moody toddler who thinks he doesn’t need to sleep during the day anymore.

My predictable time off in the middle of each school day is no more and it has reminded me of how I felt a few years ago when I was going through this ‘transition’ (for us both) with Ned. History is repeating itself in our house and below is a piece I wrote for Sydney’s Child a couple of years ago which reminds me that this is just a phase... and home will not stay this way forever...

No More Naps (Published in Sydney’s Child magazine, February 2009)

I nervously look out my French doors towards the garden as I pour water into the coffee plunger and my friend chats obliviously. It’s four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and my two-almost-three-year-old son is running around in circles laughing maniacally. This is not a good sign. As my friend’s daughter, of a similar age, bends down to pick up his toy lawnmower, my son lunges, pushing her roughly and shouts indignantly — as only a two-year-old can — ‘No, that’s MINE!’

After the fracas is resolved, I turn to my friend apologetically, ‘He didn’t have an afternoon sleep.’ She nods, smiling empathetically.

*******************

The day begins well; with his older sister at preschool we enjoy a bit of shopping followed by morning tea at a café, an elaborate fantasy game with fire engines and diggers, lunch, and three picture books before bed. I come downstairs looking forward to a couple of hours of quiet, or perhaps more honestly, Oprah and a cup of tea. But then I hear a little voice singing. It’s the theme song of his favourite cartoon about a fire engine.

‘Stay calm’, I say to myself, ‘It won’t be long before he drops off. He looked tired enough.’ I turn up Oprah.

Half-an-hour later he shouts out to me.

‘Hello mummy,’ he says with his angelic smile as I open the door.

‘It’s time for a sleep. You haven’t had a sleep yet, have you?’ I say sternly.

‘No, I’ve had a wake.’ He answers honestly.

Another half-hour goes by. Oprah and my tea are finished, but still my son sings. I put the washing machine on to stop myself listening and becoming more frustrated.

I go back upstairs. He’s sitting in bed looking at books. How can I be angry about that? Yet, I also know that without this sleep the afternoon will descend into hell.

I attempt for a third time to make him nap.

I chat to a friend on the phone, out in the garden, where I can pretend he is sleeping soundly. Then he appears, clutching Babar the elephant, wide awake and smiling. It’s over. My generally calm, placid little boy who has now been awake since 6.30am will have to survive on no sleep until this evening. To do so, he will become a wilful, manic, teary and unpredictable mess.

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I used to think an overtired newborn was trying, but that was before experiencing an overtired toddler. When my daughter began to threaten to drop her afternoon sleep around the same age I remember commenting to a friend who was a counsellor that I didn’t know how I would cope without having a couple of hours off each day. She laughed and said that she had counselled many mothers who went through a depression once their toddlers stopped day-sleeps. I attempted to smile despite the sense of dread.

But, of course, as with all new chapters of parenting, my daughter and I found a way to settle into this new arrangement: some quiet time reading in her bedroom after lunch each day allowing me the illusion of time to myself. Before long she was at preschool a couple of days a week and I became used to a three hour break while my baby son slept.

Oh, how quickly they grow though. And I had forgotten this awful transition time when they still need a sleep to get through the afternoon despite resisting it. As I pour my friend her coffee and listen to my daughter call out from upstairs that her brother is ‘not playing gently’ I am reminded why I stopped socialising in the afternoons.

There’s a crash upstairs, a wail and a stern ‘you naughty boy’ from my daughter. Her tea-set has been thrown across the room. I bring him downstairs and tell him that he will have to sit with my friend and me as he can’t play gently. He eats afternoon tea and rubs his eyes. He spills his water and rubs his eyes. He bangs his knee getting down from the table and howls. It’s only 4.30pm.

**********************

At 5pm my friend and her daughters leave. My son is now covered in mud and mosquito bites from playing in the garden, but at least he hasn’t annoyed the other children for the last half hour. I decide a bath before dinner is necessary tonight.

He seems calmer now and more loveable; smelling of baby shampoo and clean pyjamas. There were tears about his dinosaur pyjamas being in the wash but he has finally grown attached to the monkey ones he is wearing. But the contentment doesn’t last long. He spills dinner down his front and is devastated. Tears because he has made a mess, tears because he wants to still wear these monkey pyjamas. Finally my daughter and I convince him his robot pyjamas are much better and peace is restored.

By now my husband is home. My son climbs onto his father’s lap and quickly asks for a story and bed. He sucks two fingers and hugs the toy elephant he sleeps with every night. My husband carries him upstairs. His red-rimmed eyes stare at me as he waves good night. He has given in. It is only 6pm.

I reflect, while pouring myself a glass of wine, that there is actually a positive side to the end of day-sleeps.

When Home once belonged to... a Bank Robber

Darcy Ezekiel Duggan was a bank robber and according to the Sydney Morning Herald, New South Wales’ most notorious prison escape artist.

In 1946, he escaped from a prison tram by cutting a hole through the roof with a kitchen knife and climbing out. Today that tram is on display at the Sydney Tramway Museum. Wikipedia details another time when he reportedly escaped from prison, leaving a note on the wall of his cell which read “Gone to Gowings”. He spent 30 years in prison; half his life.

For the other half spent outside of prison, he had to live somewhere. And for some time he lived in a terrace house in Sydney’s inner west; a terrace house that eventually belonged to friends of mine.

While restoring the old house, they discovered more stories of the home’s past. During a visit to the local demolition yard looking for windows, my friend met a man who used to live in her street and ‘run the best two-up game in Sydney’ in the backyard. Another time her husband saw a family sitting in a car outside the house staring in. The father explained how it was once a boarding house and his whole family lived in one room. He wanted his children to see that not everyone grows up in a big house.

A house with a colourful past and colourful characters; but were there any signs of Darcy Duggan’s occupation? Perhaps. A loose brick in the kitchen wall was always a curiosity. A brick my friends spent many years not moving. A loose brick seems an ideal hiding spot for gold, money, jewellery. Might Darcy have left something behind when he was put in prison?

Sadly, the house was not going to give up that secret. When they finally did move the brick nothing was revealed. But elsewhere in the house, who knows?!

Darcy Duggan Police Photo 1949 © State Library of NSW